Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertine Order c. 1130-c. 1300.

The Gilbertine Order has not been neglected: the pioneer work of Rose Graham (1901) was followed in the 1930s and 40s by the studies based on The Book of St Gilbert by David Knowles and Raymonde Foreville; Professor Foreville, with Gillian Keir, gave us a complete edition of The Book in Oxford Medieval Texts in 1987; and among many recent works (including important studies by Giles Constable and Sharon Elkins) Sally Thompson's Women religious (1991) has most fully set St Gilbert in his wider context. Brian Golding has now reaped the harvest of his own long-standing research, of the first full edition of this most important, and remarkably sophisticated text, and of recent discussion of twelfth-century religion; and full justice has been done to the Gilbertines at last.

Golding's book is a natural …